Congratulations to Jack Cahill and the Church Point project team for winning the MBA National Award for Excellence in Civil Infrastructure (up-to $25m) for the McCarrs Creek Road Church Point Upgrade Project. We were also finalists in the environmental excellence category for this project, which is an achievement in itself.

We were in good company, with our presentation sitting alongside that of Multiplex who took out the overall excellence award for the Optus Stadium development in Perth.

All credit to Dave Condon, Shane Morrissey and the entire project team.

• the work was delivered in 3 stages,
• over 46 weeks,
• with 150,000t of contaminated material transported and disposed,
• and safe management of the contaminated environment,
• Top-down construction – a first for this type of work in Australia (most likely the southern hemisphere!)
• We designed and developed a bespoke ventilation system that provided fresh air and filtered the exhaust.
• Containerised transport of contaminated material from a CBD bulk excavation – another industry first.

One individual doesn’t make this happen, it takes a team. Well done to all on taking a massive step for the Ward business. The industry was watching on and you have delivered in spades (well….. in containers!!)

Special thanks go to the Lendlease project team for providing us with this massive challenge to demonstrate Ward’s capability and for their support throughout.

Onwards and upwards!

Hurling.

Yeah. I didn’t know what it was either.

Imagine a bunch of men on a field, much like every other sport, except instead of tossing around a large, somewhat soft ball, they’re swinging huge wooden sticks at each other whilst trying to pass a small leather ball & wearing nothing more than a light helmet. Hurling is known as the fastest field game in the world, and truth be told, it sounds like one of the hardest. If a player wants to carry the ball for more than four steps they must balance it on the end of their flat wooden stick, called a sliotar. Not only must they dodge 15 men from the opposing team trying to wack them with a stick, but they have to balance the ball as well? OK Ireland.

Ward’s resident hurling expert Colm Drumgoole said “we know from history that Celtic warriors used hurling to train their young men before going into battle. And when you watch a game today it still resembles a battle.”

On Sunday, a group of Wards Irishman, celebrated an epic win for Galway over Kilkenny, at Sydney Olympic Park, and Brian Mahon hasn’t stopped announcing it. So here we are, shouting from the rooftops, GALWAY CAME OUT ON TOP! Apologies for those of you from Kilkenny.

We are very pleased to announce that Ward picked up a total of three awards at the Master Builders Association NSW Excellence in Construction Awards on Saturday night.

• Civil Engineering & Excellence in Environment for McCarrs Creek Road Upgrade — Church Point, and
• Site safety — Civil Construction for Crown Resort Stage 1C — Bulk Excavation — Barangaroo

It was a pleasure to read the comments of the judging panel for the safety award who said out submission “was a pleasure to judge”, that our safety processes were “followed flawlessly, procedurally  perfect” and compared our containerised removal of contaminated material for the basement of Crown Resort to the “inner workings of a Swiss watch”.

Well done to the Church Point and Barangaroo teams and all involved in the support and delivery of these two projects.

A year ago we poured our first blinding for the ground floor slab in the NE corner of the Crown Resort site at Barangaroo.

Friday we loaded out the last container of dirt, a key milestone in what has been a landmark project for Ward.

Well done to Senior PM Dave Condon and the entire project team for what has been an outstanding effort.

The 4^th Annual Ward Safety Day was held on Friday at Moore Park Golf club, with our main focus this year being the control of risks relating to works in the vicinity of underground utility assets.

The day was started with an introduction by COO Brian Mahon on the importance of the effective management of WHS risk, followed by CEO Julia Ward’s overview of the business performance during the last year and outlook for the future.

Our WHS team gave a briefing on WHS performance against targets during past 12 months and highlighted lessons learned.

Traffic Manager Shane Guerts, who is a recent addition to the Ward team, gave a presentation on safety at work sites and the risks & control measures relating to vehicular traffic and pedestrian movements, and General Manager Steve Green presented on risks associated with underground utility assets from a business perspective.

This was followed by group sessions (project managers, engineers, supervisors and workforce) discussing Ward’s excavation process, recent improvements and role of each person in the prevention of incidents.

Greg Ware from Sydney Occupational Services popped in to give office personnel a lesson on ergonomics and workstation set-up, to help prevent injury.

These informative sessions were well received by all participants and gave them an opportunity to raise any safety improvement suggestions to help us over the course of the year.

Huge thank you to Uday Gorrepati, Joe O’Connor, Colm Drumgoole and Rachel Baiocco for organizing the day, and for helping keep our people safe

The Annual Peter Ward Golf Day was yet again a success! After weeks of rain in Sydney, the weather was kind to us, allowing a day of warmth and sunshine!

This was a very special year marking 10 years since the passing of founder Peter Ward, so we celebrated his life one lost golf ball at a time! Moore Park Golf Course hooked us up with all the bits and bobs to make our day special, including a refreshments cart that kept us hydrated on what was a warm and demanding afternoon. Although the golf skills on show left a lot to be desired, it really is one of the best days of the year, spent socializing with friends, meeting new colleagues, and remembering the man who made it all possible.

Congratulations to the winning team, Ross Traynor, Jack Cahill (who looks just as stunned as me about Ben being on the winning team), Ben Maher, and Julia Ward! Thanks to Michael Cahalane, who graciously stepped aside to allow Uday Gorrepati to pick up the putting competition prize. Disclaimer: We’re still unsure if Uday even participated in the putting competition, but nonetheless, he won the popular vote by a landslide!

Turkey Prize: Colm Drumgoole (ouch), Liam Curran, Jacob Dickson, and Ebi Abyazi

Yellow Ball: Michael Leong, Michael Sherlock, Mostafa Nazar (his man bag), and Alfred Fernandez

Closest to the Pin: Michael Sherlock

Longest Drive: Jack Cahill & Julia Ward

RMS and Ward hosted a BBQ onsite on Friday for all project stakeholders to celebrate the completion of all works ahead of the September 30 Rail shutdown. This was a major achievement for the project overcoming a number of challenging issues on the way to completion to still have the project finished on time. The client was very satisfied with the delivery of the project. A big effort was put in by all of the project team including Adam McCarthy, George Callaghan, Asib Alime, Dawei Gu, Adrian Wong, Brady Noack, Darren Zhang and Beau Westland.

Great work to everyone involved.

Special mention to the Jordan Springs team for their recent earthwork efforts.

Jacob Maher, Nathan Murdoch, and Jeff Richards had to move 45,000m3 of material on a 5km turnaround using truck and trailers. Between the loading team of Bill Davis, Pat Forde and Trevor of Danmark who were all operating 20t Excavators, they were regularly loading in excess of 300 loads between them per day, with the highest total being 367 loads. That has got to be a new record for Ward!

Congratulations to the team for this achievement!